Alabama teacher receives national award for excellence in Holocaust education

Logan Greene with Stanlee Stahl

An eighth-grade teacher in Hoover, just south of Birmingham, received a prominent national award for excellence in teaching about the Holocaust.

Berry Middle School’s Logan Greene received the Robert I. Goldman Award for Excellence in Holocaust Education at an advanced seminar for educators, coordinated by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, held over Martin Luther King Weekend in January.

“We are privileged to honor exceptional educators each year and especially proud to present this year’s award to Logan Greene for his outstanding work in teaching the Holocaust at Berry Middle School,” said Stanlee Stahl, JFR’s executive vice president.

“It is extremely humbling to have been chosen as 2023’s Goldman Award from among so many of my incredible fellow Holocaust educators who participate in the JFR’s national program,” said Greene. “At a time when antisemitism, misinformation and disinformation are on the rise globally, we must teach the lessons of the Holocaust to our students, who will become our future leaders.”

The JFR selected Greene as the recipient of the 2023 Goldman Award because of his outstanding commitment to teaching the Holocaust in his school. The award was presented on MLK Day in January 2024.

Greene’s continued involvement in JFR programming has been made possible by the Alabama Holocaust Education Center, based in Birmingham. He first attended the JFR’s Summer Institute in 2012 and has since participated in eight of the organization’s highly selective Advanced Seminars. The programs are intensive academic seminars for middle and high school teachers whose curriculum includes or focuses on teaching about the Holocaust.

Over the years, Greene has used what he learned from the JFR to strengthen his five-week Holocaust literary and diary curriculum toward providing students with a greater understanding of the Holocaust and the perils of antisemitism so that his students become more tolerant and empathetic toward others. He has been teaching for 16 years.

Goldman, for whom the award is named, was one of the founding trustees of the JFR, served as its vice chair and led its education committee until he died in 1998.

There were 22 middle and high school teachers and Holocaust center staff from seven states selected to participate in the 2024 Advanced Seminar, held in New Jersey.

The Advanced Seminar is an intensive graduate-level program in which a select group of educators who are already well-versed in Holocaust history are given the opportunity to study more focused topics relating to the Holocaust and antisemitism from world-renowned lecturers. This year’s speakers included Professor Magda Teter from Fordham University; USC Shoah Foundation Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Robert Williams who concurrently serves as an advisor to The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; and renowned British author Dr. Dave Rich, who leads the Community Security Trust as its director of policy.

In addition to Greene, Amy McDonald from the Alabama Holocaust Education Center in Birmingham and Mindy Walker from Holt High School in Tuscaloosa were selected to participate.

Others from the region included Barbara Goldstein from the Holocaust Education Resource Council in Tallahassee; Judy Schancupp from the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust in Sandy Springs, Ga.; Sadie Rodgers from Richland Northeast High School in Columbia, S.C.; and Laurie Garcia and Wendy Warren from the Holocaust Museum Houston.

“Each of these educators has already distinguished themselves through their tremendous commitment to teaching the Holocaust in their schools and towards furthering their own education in the environment of antisemitism which led to the Holocaust,” Stahl said. “By attending this intensive, graduate-level program, they will gain an even greater understanding of the history of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust antisemitism, which will increase their effectiveness in the classroom and enable them to mentor other colleagues who teach the subject.”

“Because of the alarming growth of antisemitism today, our focus this year is not only on historical antisemitism which led to the Holocaust but also on more recent rhetoric spread online and through other mediums,” she added.

In addition to holding teacher education workshops on the Holocaust, JFR provides monthly financial assistance to 93 aged and needy Righteous Gentiles, living in 11 countries. Since its founding, the JFR has provided more than $44 million to aged and needy rescuers.